


my heart is holding on to you

by sameboots



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon - Book, Communication, F/M, Jaime eat pray loved his way back to Brienne, Jaime is Valonqar, Kid Fic, Post-Canon, Post-Lady Stoneheart, Second Chances, Slow Build, and explores the mosaic of human emotion, but boy does that not going well for him, but there's plenty of sweetness, everyone deals with their choices, goldenhand the just, talks about their traumas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 21,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sameboots/pseuds/sameboots
Summary: After the Battle for the Seven Kingdoms, Jaime Lannister sailed east, hoping to find peace and some manner of freedom from his past sins. Now, ten years later, he finds himself once more in Westeros, on the shores of Tarth, looking for absolution from the one person he couldn’t leave behind.A story of second chances, the healing powers of communication, compassion, forgiveness, and love.--Brienne is exactly as he remembers and very different. She’s just as tall and broad and homely, but she’s softened around the edges. Then again, regular meals and peacetime will do that. The only evidence of her reaction to him is a slight pause in her stride across the courtyard.“Ser Jaime,” she greets him with a nod.“Ser Brienne.” He bows deeply. “Or would my lady be more appropriate?”“Ser will do between us.”Seeing her is more than he imagined and he imagined it being quite overwhelming.
Relationships: Brienne of Tarth/Other - (Past), Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister - (Past), Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 544
Kudos: 527





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I caved to peer pressure, so this gets its own document now. I would still classify this as more of a series of interconnected vignettes within the same 'verse. 
> 
> I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up the daily scene updates, I hesitate to even say aloud that's what I've been doing with this. Hopefully, people will toddle over here but keep the same expectations. ;)

Brienne is exactly as he remembers and very different. She’s just as tall and broad and homely, but she’s softened around the edges. Then again, regular meals and peacetime will do that. The only evidence of her reaction to him is a slight pause in her stride across the courtyard.

“Ser Jaime,” she greets him with a nod.

“Ser Brienne.” He bows deeply. “Or would my lady be more appropriate?”

“Ser will do between us.”

Seeing her is more than he imagined and he imagined it being quite overwhelming. Her eyes are more arresting, especially now that he knows the waters of Tarth cannot compare, and the gnarled scar on her cheek has faded in color if not in distortion.

He shifts uncomfortably under her placid stare.

“You look well, Ser,” he says awkwardly. “The mantle of Evenstar suits you.”

“I wish that I could return the compliment,” she says lightly, her eyes traveling the length of his body before meeting his eyes once more.

He hopes he isn’t imagining the humor in them.

“One hand and a lack of squires will do that to a man,” he says. “And, of course, no longer having access to the Lannister coffers.”

“Quite.”

She glances briefly at where his right sleeve is tied in a knot over his stump. He’s grateful she doesn’t ask. Not yet. Not here.

The silence has just become uncomfortable when a cacophony of noise rings through the courtyard, two small voices calling out, “Mother!”

He has heard tale, but it’s still a shock when the small boys run to Brienne, gazing up at her with excited grins. The soft smile on her face when she looks at them is so maternal it opens up a long-forgotten wound in Jaime’s chest. They’re rambling swiftly about their sword lessons for the days, their brown hair sticking to their head with sweat.

The older boy is still chattering away when the younger one turns his head, his brown eyes catching sight of Jaime. He looks at him warily but curiously.

“Who’s that?” he asks bluntly, interrupting the flow of information from his older brother.

“Manners, Declan,” Brienne says with the swift but long-suffering tone of a parent who has given the same lesson innumerable times. She glances back up at Jaime. “This is Ser Jaime.” For the first time, her calm expression wavers before she says, “The man who knighted me.”

The older boy’s eyes widen. “Goldenhand the Just?” He glances down at Jaime’s empty sleeve as well. “But I don’t see--“

“We use people’s proper names and titles,” Brienne reprimands her older son. “Not whatever silly moniker some court jester named them.”

The older boy looks properly chastised.

“Yes, mother.” He cuts his eyes to Jaime once again. “But he is Ser Jaime Lannister?”

“Yes,” Brienne replies, locking eyes with Jaime. “He is Ser Jaime Lannister.”

“Is he staying with us?”

Jaime watches Brienne’s throat tighten as she swallows, a shadow passing across her expression.

“If you have the space for me,” Jaime says carefully. “I would impose upon your hospitality for a time, Ser.”

“Tarth welcomes you, Ser Jaime,” she says. He can’t help but note she says nothing of herself. “You may stay as long as you need.”

But not as long as he wants, he thinks, is the unspoken end to her answer.


	2. Chapter 2

Brienne has never considered what it would be like to see Jaime again. She remembers the day he left, the strangely heavy farewell outside the ruins of King’s Landing. At the time she was sure she would never see him again.

In some ways, she was right. The man in front of her shares only a passing resemblance to the one that sailed away a decade ago. The grey in his hair has tarnished the gold of his youth, his face is lined with wrinkles she has no memory of, and the bramble bush masquerading as a beard obscures the cut glass jaw and wicked smile that taunted her for so long.

The eyes are the same, though, bright green, and sharply curious like a cat.

He follows her through the halls to the guest quarters. Perhaps his time away taught him the value of silence.

“Tarth seems to be faring well.”

Or perhaps not.

“It is,” she confirms. “We’re located advantageously for trade between Westeros and Essos, which has obviously increased quite dramatically after the Wars. The fishing industry as well. We’ve done much to establish some economy that doesn’t rely solely on being an outpost for trade routes.”

“You’ve done.”

Brienne looks over at him with a raised brow.

He clears his throat. “I only meant that you are the Evenstar,” he explains. “Surely, it is to your credit and not your--”

For the first time in their acquaintance to her knowledge, Jaime stops himself before saying something that might offend.

“My late husband, did you mean?” she asks, taking a small measure of enjoyment in the way his shoulders tense. “You are largely correct. He left the majority of the decisions for Tarth to me. However, no man or woman is an island and only a fool would try to lead without counsel.”

He nods but remains silent. For a blessed moment, at least.

“The boys look like their father,” he says as if it erupts from him, without his permission judging by the look on his face.

She realizes that he may know she is widowed, but he must believe she married Hyle of all men. There’s no feasible way he knew her husband before. But then, she and Jaime hardly knew one another outside of war and pain.

“They do,” she confirms, not correcting his incorrect and, frankly, improbable presumption. “Though, Malcolm is shaped much as I was in my youth. He has my height and breadth. Declan, I fear, has inherited my mouth and my nose, before it was broken thrice.”

Jaime hums in acknowledgement as if he has no idea how to respond, despite being the one to broach the subject. He remains silent until they reach the room where he’ll be staying.

She opens the door for him, leading the way. The maids have already been in to air the room and clean it of dust.

“I hope you’ll find the quarters comfortable,” she says. “We don’t have many guests at Evenfall.”

“I’m sure they’ll be a good sight better than most of my accommodations these past several years,” he says with a wry smile.

She nods.

“We eat supper in the hall. If you wish, I can have Salyssa escort you when it’s time,” she offers.

“I would like that.”

She nods once more and moves to quit the room. She pauses at the door and turns back to face him.

“I didn’t marry Hyle,” she says simply.

Jaime blinks. Surprised, she thinks.

“We wouldn’t have suited.”

“And your husband--” he pauses as if waiting for her to supply a name. When she doesn’t, he continues, “He suited you?”

She swallows, her throat tightening at the memory of him. She didn’t love him with the aching want that she thought meant love the way she loved Renly. She didn’t love him in a way that felt like every muscle in her body wanted to scream and fight and, what she now knows was, fuck, like how she thought she loved Jaime.

She loved her husband in she same way Sansa told her Lady Catelyn loved Lord Eddard: built slowly, day-by-day, brick-by-brick, and if it wasn’t an all-consuming passion, it was still something Brienne never thought she would have. Her husband had been kind, comforting, supportive, and, eventually, loving.

She blinks and realizes Jaime is gazing at her as if he’s trying to read the answer in her expression. She draws her shoulders back and schools her features into placidity once again.

“Yes,” she says calmly. “We suited.”

She looks away from him and opens the door. “I’ll send someone with clothes and a wash basin.”

She leaves before he answers.


	3. Chapter 3

Jaime watches Brienne run through her paces for a good while before she seems to feel his gaze, stopping abruptly and turning to face him.

“I’m pleased to see you're still in fine form,” he says.

“Is there a reason I wouldn’t be?” she asks archly.

He tries to suppress his smile at her familiar defensiveness. “Many a knight falls out of practice when elevated to the head of their house, particularly in times of peace. Though, now I think of it, were you yet born before the reign of good King Robert began?”

He can’t quite help the bitterness in his voice.

An expression he doesn’t have a chance to read flits across her face, there and gone in the blink of an eye.

“You know well that I was,” she answers. “Or perhaps you never knew my age. Yes, I was a small child when King Robert was crowned, though I was not yet old enough that I remember.”

Gods, sometimes he does forget—

“Idle lords,” he muses. “Sometimes even knights are more than happy to assume the life of one.”

“I worked harder than most to earn my knighthood,” she says. “I don’t mind saying so now. I have no intention of putting it all to waste, not even in times of peace.”

“More than anyone,” he says. “You worked harder than anyone for your knighthood. Any man would’ve been knighted for the same deeds long before you were.”

She nods once, sharply. “As you say.”

Jaime wanders over to where the practice swords are lined up, trailing his fingers over their hilts, an aching want in his gut he tried to forget for years. He finds one that looks to be about the right length and lifts it, testing the weight and balance.

It’s more like coming home than any place ever could be.

He turns to Brienne, sword held aloft.

“Would you promise not to embarrass an old man if he asked you to spar with him?” he asks.

“If he asked me himself, I would consider it.”

He laughs loudly, the first truly happy laugh for him in too many years to count. Long enough that it sounds foreign to his own ears.

“May I have this dance, my lady?” he asks with an exaggerated tone and bow. At her familiar scowl, he grins wide enough his cheeks hurt. “Ser,” he corrects.

He knew he wouldn’t match her, or come close, but the clumsiness is new and he’s barely as strong as the greenest of squires. It takes an embarrassingly short number of bouts before he’s bent double, hands resting on his knees, gasping for breath, his muscles quivering like a newborn foal.

“Thank you,” he says between gasps.

“For what?” she asks, flipping the sword over her hand.

“For not laughing at my humiliating showing.”

“Have you touched a sword since you left Westeros?” she asks bluntly.

“Am I that bad?” he asks lightly.

She looks at him pointedly. “A direct answer will suit.”

“No.” He sighs. “For a time, it would have been too notable for a man of my status to be as skilled as I once was. After that, I had neither time nor opportunity to practice. Nor, to be forthright, access to weaponry.”

She looks at him, seeming to search for something, but she simply says, “Then you performed as well as anyone could expect.”

“Ah,” he says, straightening to his full height once again, tilting his head. “Damned with faint praise.”

It pleases him that her mouth twists in irritation, her voice harsher when she says, “Would you like a deeper assessment? You have the strength of my eldest son and he’s only just turned eight. You have the speed of a man twenty years your senior and you apparently no longer think it necessary to try. You had already decided your defeat before you took the first step.”

With that, she pushes past him to return her practice sword. He has no immediate response, and she apparently feels he doesn’t require more attention than her harsh, though accurate, observations.

She’s halfway across the courtyard, her broad shoulders and tense walk too achingly familiar even after all these years.

“Brienne,” he calls.

She stops immediately, jerking as if startled. When she turns to face him, she looks like he slapped her; wide-eyed, mouth slack, cheeks pinkened. His heart feels like it’s ricocheting around his ribcage; he fears it may not be entirely from the exertion of their duel. Perhaps the presumption of using her given name was a step too far, an intimacy she’s not willing to allow anymore.

“If I swear to try, will you practice with me?” he asks, hoping he doesn’t sound half so pathetic as he fears he does. “It would be an honor and I have missed it.”

It takes a blood-chilling moment for her to reply.

“I practice every morning at sunrise,” she says. “I won’t make special allowances for you. I’m busy with the running of my island.”

“Of course,” he says. “Thank you.”

She nods curtly. “I will see you tomorrow, Ser.”

She puts a slight emphasis on the last word and he knows that she means it as a rebuke and a reminder of what they are to one another now.


	4. Chapter 4

Jaime arrives in the yard before her the next morning, and the morning after, and the morning after that. In fact, he arrives every morning before her for a fortnight.

At some point, she starts expecting it. At some point, it stops startling her to see him.

He’s improved, but not by much, and she knows that he is truly so out of practice and old enough that he’ll never regain what he once had. But he is improving.

Still, she disarms him and sweeps his feet out from underneath him for the tenth time in a half hour.

He groans. “I yield, Ser,” he says, without opening his eyes. “If you’ll have mercy on me, I believe that’s enough abuse for the day.”

She holds out her hand and when he finally opens his eyes he takes it, allowing her to haul him to a standing position.

“You’re getting better,” she tells him sincerely.

He smiles wryly. “I’m almost certain I couldn’t have become worse.”

“I don’t give compliments readily,” she says.

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?” He mocks a half-bow, as he always does at the end of their bouts. “I thank you for the sound beating, Ser.”

She doesn’t honor him with a response to his insincerity.

She expects him to leave after he puts away his practice sword; he does most mornings. Instead, he remains to watch her finish her own practice. She can feel his eyes on her as she moves through the paces, pushing past her normal limits to--she doesn’t know, precisely. She doesn’t want to think about why.

When she finally finishes, replacing her own sword, getting a drink of water from the barrel, and any other way to waste time that she can imagine, she finally starts back to the castle, leaving Jaime to trail after her. She tries to keep pace, reminding herself to walk normally despite the instinct to get as far away from him as fast as possible before she has to face whatever it is she’s avoiding.

“What was his name?” Jaime asks.

She stops in her tracks. Jaime walks past her a couple of steps before coming to a halt and facing her.

“What?” she asks.

“Your husband,” Jaime says. “You didn’t marry Hunt. I was wondering who you did marry.”

“You didn’t know him,” she says, her lips strangely numb.

“That’s not what I asked.”

There’s a strange note to Jaime’s voice. Or maybe she’s imagining it, maybe it’s that her heart is thumping queerly in her chest.

“Why don’t you want to tell me?” Jaime asks, frowning, his eyebrows knit together, a look of genuine hurt painted on his features.

She doesn’t know. It’s not as if she can’t speak of her husband. Her boys speak of him often; she wants it that way. It’s important that they remember their father.

“That’s not--” she begins to protest but thinks better of it. She’s been down that path a thousand times with Jaime, a circle of words that devolve into an argument with no true meaning or ending. “His name was Alec Mormont. He was the third son of a second son.”

She doesn’t know why she explains any further than his name, except that the name alone causes Jaime’s face to relax, and that alone causes something inside her to uncoil.

“It was Sansa’s arrangement,” Brienne explains. “That’s how we met, why we married. He needed lands and funds. I needed heirs.”

“You make it sound like a trade agreement,” Jaime says, a sharpness to his tone that years ago would have made her lash out at him for the slight. Now...now it just makes her tired.

“It was,” she agrees. “At first.”

“But not always?”

Brienne starts walking again, leaving him to trail her through the halls once more. She needs to keep moving before she has to wonder if the tremble in her hands is something other than exhaustion from training.

“Not always,” she agrees.

“What was he like?” Jaime asks.

She sighs heavily. “Why are you asking me these things?”

“Because—” he clears his throat. “Because I would like to know you again.”

Brienne knows the throbbing of her pulse isn’t from practicing.

“He was kind,” she says after a pause, when she’s sure her voice won’t shake in time with her hands. “Loyal. Honorable. Faithful.”

“How thrilling.”

She draws up short, rage racing through her veins like a bolt of lightning and it takes everything within her not to punch Jaime.

“How dare you,” she says, not caring if her words tremble. Jaime looks at her, blanching the moment he sees the expression on her face.

“Bri—”

“You will not speak ill of him,” she says vehemently. “He was a good man and we had a good marriage. If nothing else, he was honest with me. He loved me as no one else ever has and I never had to wonder where he lay his heart.”

“My apologies,” Jaime says quietly, still pale and wide-eyed. “I should not have made a jest of it. I hope this will not change your mind in regard to our sparring sessions.”

She doesn’t have an answer for him, not yet. All she wants is to be well away from him until she can catch her breath. He looks defeated and some dark part of her is glad of it.

“If you—I am—” he huffs like a frustrated child. “I am relieved he was a good husband to you. No one could deserve it more.”

Jaime leaves then, turning from her and walking away before she can gather herself to respond.


	5. Chapter 5

Evenfall is not nearly large enough that Jaime worries about losing his way within its walls. He has less to do here than he ever did in Essos. There he had to worry about food and a roof over his head, watching his back from pickpockets.

He supposes it’s that awareness that makes the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He looks over his shoulder to see a small brunette head disappear behind the corner. He smiles and turns so he can walk backward, facing the corner. It takes no more than three steps before the boy’s face pops into view. The boy freezes, his eyes widening like a startled rabbit.

“You may as well come out now,” Jaime says. “You have nothing to fear, I swear it.”

The boy hesitantly steps out but walks no closer.

“You’re Ser Brienne’s youngest son, aren’t you?” Jaime asks. The boy nods. “You’ll have to give me your name, I fear I’ve forgotten it.”

“Declan,” he says quietly.

“Declan,” Jaime repeats. The boy is all pale skin, dark hair and eyes. He remembers Brienne said the boy inherited her nose and mouth, but Jaime can’t see it. It unnerves him that if he saw the boy in a market, he would never guess, never know, who his mother was. The combination of pale skin and fawn-like eyes calls to mind another young boy from long ago. “Is there a reason you were following me?”

Declan shakes his head rather than answering.

Jaime sighs and squats down, gesturing for the boy to come closer. Declan bites his lip but walks slowly toward him, hands clutched into nervous fists at his sides.

“Do you know my name, Declan?”

Declan nods his head. “You’re Ser Jaime Lannister, Goldenhand the Just.”

Jaime barely manages not flinching at the title.

Declan seems not to notice because he continues unabated. “You knighted my mother before the Battle for King’s Landing and gifted her with both Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail.”

Just the name of the swords trips along Jaime’s nerve endings.

“Yes, that’s all true,” Jaime confirms. “You know quite a lot for a boy.”

Declan preens at the compliment. “I’m better at my studies than Malcolm, Septon Wyllis said so.”

Jaime suppresses a smile. “My younger brother was a good bit better than I as well.”

Declan bites his lip and his eyes fall to where Jaime’s right arm ends short of his hand.

“Ser,” Declan begins hesitantly. Jaime nods that he may continue, knowing what’s coming. “If you’re Goldenhand the Just...what happened to your hand, the golden one?”

Jaime takes a breath before answering. He hasn’t spoken of the aftermath of the battle with anyone, much less with a child that could be no more than six years old.

“It served me no purpose anymore,” he says simply. “It was heavy and it didn’t help me to do anything more than I could with my left, so I sold it to pay for a home and food. Those were much more useful to me than something pretty, wouldn’t you agree?”

The boy nods vigorously.

“Do you want another hand?” he asks.

“No,” Jaime says easily. “I get along rather well without now.”

The boy shifts, a look on his face all but screaming that he has another question.

“You may ask me anything,” Jaime offers.

“Did you really lose your hand to a bear when protecting my mother?”

The bark of laughter escapes Jaime before he can help it, loud and echoing off of the granite halls. Declan startles at the volume. It’s been so long since Jaime had reason to speak of the bear incident, that the simple reminder is welcome this far removed.

“My apologies,” Jaime says, patting Declan’s slight shoulder. “I didn’t mean to startle you. There was a bear, though your mother saved me as much as I did her. I did lose my hand protecting your mother, but it was to prevent some very bad men from harming her.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Very much,” Jaime says. He can still remember the excruciating infection and the recovery that may have been even worse. “But I would do it again, a thousand times more.”

“That’s very brave of you,” Declan says, an admiring look in his eyes that settles poorly in Jaime’s gut.

“It’s what any honorable man would do,” Jaime deflect. “Your mother did many brave things as well. She saved my life as many, if not more, times than I have saved hers. The scar on her cheek,” Jaime brushes his thumb against Declan’s where her scar would be, “she received that while in service to me.”

The boy’s eyes widen, his mouth forming a soft ‘o’ of surprise.

“Your mother and I had many adventures,” Jaime says, not liking how thick his voice becomes. “Not many of them were happy, but I’m happy to have met her.”

“Did you miss her?” Declan asks. “I miss her when she has to leave for meetings.”

“I did,” Jaime admits, though why he’s being more honest with a child than with the woman in question isn’t something he wants to examine too closely.

“Is that why you’re here? Because you missed her and she makes you happy?”

He makes it sounds so simple. To him, it probably is. When someone makes you happy, you want to be near them. If you miss them, you want to be near them. It should be that easy.

But life is rarely that simple when you reach adulthood.

“That’s part of it, yes,” Jaime answers. “I have other things I must do. But yes, I’m here because I wanted to see your mother again.”

Declan nods seriously, looking amusingly contemplative for such a small boy.

“Do you know your way around the Keep?” Jaime asks him.

That draws Declan out of his reverie and he grins. “Yes!”

“Would you like to show me some of your favorite places?”

“Oh!” He looks surprised. “Yes, if you would like.”

Jaime stands up once again, wincing at the creaking pain in his knees and ankles. “Yes, I would very much appreciate your assistance.”


	6. Chapter 6

Brienne pauses on the walkway looking out over the training yard. The pages and squires are being put through their paces by Ser Manfryd, her sons included, but there’s an interloper moving between the rows of children. Even from her vantage point she can see the gentle way Jaime corrects their form; straightening a wrist here, turning a foot there, using his own hand to show a correction to a child’s grip. It’s odd watching him. She realizes she’s never seen him with a child, be it his own or others. The few times he was near one he seemed uncomfortable, but this Jaime smiles easily and speaks softly and the children gaze up at him with nothing short of worshipful admiration.

She remembers so clearly how she felt at their ages, the Jaime she knew of. The Kingslayer, oathbreaker, man without honor, who killed the man he swore to protect by slitting his throat. She had been repulsed by the very idea of him and the way he besmirched the very idea of knighthood. Now, children know him as Goldenhand the Just, Queenslayer, savior of Westeros, peacebringer. She is one of the few who knows the truth of what that title means to him and how it tears at his soul with every utterance.

He’s been at Evenfall for a full moon cycle now with no sign of departure. He no longer asks her prying questions about her life while he was gone, but he does ask about Tarth and from whom she gets counsel. He still shows up every sunrise for sword practice and lingers to watch her after she beats him soundly. She’s almost grown accustomed to his presence, only the knowledge that he will leave again prevents her, protects her, from it. As if sensing her gaze, he lifts his head and turns it until his eyes meet hers. The moment he sees her, an easy grin sweeps across his face. It’s the sort of grin people compose songs for, a lovely tilt of his lips that settles warmly in her chest, raising goosebumps on her arms. It’s always been a habit of hers to be honest, if only with herself, so she knows it’s only fear that makes her hesitate to return his smile.

She has no reason to fear him now. The pain she felt when he left was that of a young, naive girl. She’s no longer so vulnerable to the world nor as tender as an open wound, but when Jaime looks away to say something to the child in front of him it takes Brienne a second too long to realize it’s Malcolm. He looks up, waves to her happily and says something to Jaime with great enthusiasm.

Jaime laughs, shoulders shaking, the sound echoing around the walled-off yard. He pats Malcolm on the shoulder and jerks his head toward Ser Manfryd before looking to Brienne once again. He holds up a hand to request that she wait for him.

It doesn’t take him long to make his way up the stairs to the walkway.

He bows, amusement still wrinkling his eyes. “Ser.”

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” she says, glancing back at the ongoing training.

“I am.” Jaime grins, bright and breathtaking. “I didn’t realize I missed it; the swords and training and their excitement. I thought it would make me sick, but instead, I find myself...hopeful.” He looks at her, an unreadable weight to his gaze. “Maybe they won’t have to make the same sort of choices we did.”

“If nothing else, the former Capitol will serve as a stark reminder of what the consequences of war can be,” she says quietly, forcing herself to look him in the eye, no matter how uncomfortable and skewering the pain there is. “It will be generations before the city is even half of what it once was, even when the people who served in the wars are gone, their lineage will continue the difficult work of rebuilding.”

“Do you hate me?” he asks her, voice quiet and choked sounding.

“Why would I hate you?” she asks, genuinely confused. “I have no cause to.”

“Of course not, you aren’t the hateful sort,” he says looking away, the last part spoken as if to himself. “Do you judge me then? You are well within your right to.”

“Ser Jaime—” He doesn’t flinch, but his face does tighten when she addresses him formally. He insists on calling her Brienne when they are alone and she can’t find it within her to stop him. Still, she can’t bring herself to call him by his given name alone. “What is there to judge now?”

“I could have stopped her,” he says flatly.

“You did,” she says, bewildered. “The gods know you have the title to prove it, no matter how you despise it.”

He shakes his head. “I could have stopped her before she burnt the city to the ground.”

“How?”

“I knew she had access to wildfire and I knew she was...unwell,” Jaime explains, his eyes are still turned toward her but he’s not looking at her.

“Did you truly believe she would burn King’s Landing to the ground?”

“I don’t know now,” Jaime says, helplessly. “I should have. She was threatening it. I was reasoning with her or trying to, but I didn’t do anything until--”

“What could you have done other than--” Brienne stops, the word catching on the tip of her tongue.

“Other than what I inevitably did when it was already too late?” Jaime asks bitterly.

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. When she opens them again, Jaime’s looking at her and she makes certain they’ve locked eyes before she says, “If you had killed her before she set the wildfire alight, before you knew for certain that she would, would you be standing before me now?”

Jaime trembles. She can see it around his mouth and eyes and she knows if she looked to his hands, they would be shaking, too.

“If you hadn’t waited, you would be dead too,” she says, voice thick with everything she’s never said aloud. “If she hadn’t destroyed King’s Landing--there’s no telling how long the war would last, how many more lives would be lost, how many houses would lay in ruin, how fractured the Kingdom that remained would be. It was not a good ending or a happy one, but it was an ending to the fighting.

“We have peace now.” She tilts her head, hopes he can see how much she means it when she says. “You deserve the credit you were given, whether you believe it and want it or not, Jaime.”

His lips part at her use of his name but no sound comes from him.

She looks away from him, drawing a deep breath into her lungs. “Thank you,” she says, affecting a lighter tone, “for helping with the trainees. I’ve seen you with them. You’re very patient but very firm.”

He walks into her line of vision to lean on the balustrade. “I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would,” he admits. “I never thought of teaching, but it’s been very rewarding.”

Brienne moves to stand beside him, finding her boys in the group. “I hope you know that you’re welcome to stay,” she says quietly. She can feel when he looks over at her, but she keeps her eyes trained on the yard. “For as long as you please, whether or not you continue to help Ser Manfryd.”

It takes a moment, but finally, Jaime says, “Thank you.”


	7. Chapter 7

The beaches around Tarth are not at all like the sandy beaches that surrounded Jaime’s childhood home and certainly nothing at all like the hot and humid shores of Marahai. Tarth is surrounded by dark grey rocks that turn to pebbles closer to the sea, craggy things that cut at the bottoms of his feet when he braves the shoreline barefoot. He mentions it to Brienne one day and she just smiles and accuses him of being a mainlander before disappearing for a meeting with her council. 

The weather on Tarth also leaves something to be desired for a man that’s spent the past several years acclimating to a climate that feels more like the hot springs that run through Winterfell. It’s perpetually cloudy and on the verge of or actively raining at Evenfall. 

He’s been cold since he arrived.

Still, he finds himself treading carefully over the sharp rocks, listening to the waves lapping at the cliffs surrounding the inlet nearest to the castle. The sound of children laughing grows louder and he looks up to see Brienne’s sons scuttle down the hill to the beach, running past him, their mother following at a much steadier pace. She looks torn between amusement and aggravation, the corner of her mouth tilted up, but an eyebrow cocked in annoyance. 

She only pauses for a second when she sees him, continuing her way down the side of the hill, stopping to stand next to him. 

“Ser Jaime,” she greets him, keeping her eyes on the boys where they’re splashing into the water. 

“So formal?” he questions, unable to keep the teasing tone out of his voice. 

The look she gives him is so singularly unimpressed that he can’t help but laugh. 

“My apologies, _Ser_ Brienne,” he says facetiously, “I simply thought we were on friendlier terms now.”

Brienne huffs and it takes all of Jaime’s self-control not to titter like a young maid. “I suppose I should take some small measure of comfort that no matter what transpires, you will _always_ be the most infuriatingly insouciant man I’ve ever met.”

“And you shall always be the most unfailingly staid woman I’ve ever met,” he says with a smile. “I can only assume the gods thought it quite a lark to throw the two of us into each other’s paths again and again.”

“Yes, well,” she says, shifting slightly. “We worked quite well together when given the chance.”

He knows he’s staring at her, but he doesn’t look away until she flushes and pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. A familiar gesture, even after years, that speaks to how uncomfortable she is. “Indeed,” he finally says quietly.

He shifts his gaze to where Malcolm and Declan are splashing each other, squealing as cold water soaks them both through their woolen breeches and tunics. They’re good boys, he’s learned from helping Ser Manfryd with their lessons, eager to learn and mindful. Malcolm may look nothing at all like his mother, but he’s certainly inherited her serious mood and intensity. Declan…

“Malcolm is much like you,” Jaime says, still looking at the boys. “I think his every dream is of being knighted.” 

“He’s been that way since he could walk,” she says. He glances over to see the soft smile on Brienne’s lips. “One of the first things he did was pick up a stick and play that it was a sword. I fear there was no avoiding it.” 

“And Declan?” Jaime asks. He hesitates slightly. “Is he much like your late husband?” 

“Yes and no,” she answers softly. “He’s much more soft-hearted than either Alec or me.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jaime says, turning to look at her once more, tracing the uneven lines of her features. “I always thought you had the softest of hearts. You simply hid it beneath the hardiest of armors.” 

She looks at him, her eyes wide and startled, her thick mouth parted in surprise. “You certainly never said as much to me,” she murmurs. 

He can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips. 

“There were many things I didn’t say to you then,” he says quietly. 

“Oh,” she says, though it’s more her lips forming the shape than any noise escaping. 

He turns toward her, bracing himself, no idea what’s about to pour from him, no matter how ill-advised and imprudent. 

But the gods seem to have other ideas.

Brienne is nearly bowled over by the full weight of Declan throwing himself against her, arms wrapped around her waist. 

“ _Declan_ ,” she says, needing only the tone of her voice for the boy to look apologetic. 

“I’m sorry, mother,” he says, though his tone leaves much to be desired in the realm of true sincerity. 

“What is so important that you attempted to tackle me?” she questions him, a gentle hand pushing the salt-stiffening hair off of his forehead. 

“May we swim?” he asks eagerly.

“No. It’s too cold.”

“But--”

“I said no,” Brienne says sternly. 

It’s odd but comforting to watch Brienne being motherly. She was always so kind to Pod, even when training him, and to see it magnified in the way she treats her own children--it burrows into him. 

“It’s too cold,” Brienne explains. “We didn’t bring a change of clothing and you’ll catch ill if you get too far out.”

At Declan’s mournful expression, Brienne looks heavenward for a moment and Jaime can see her mentally steeling herself. 

“The next sunny day, we’ll bring a change of clothes and you and Malcolm may swim as long as you wish,” she says. 

Declan looks slightly mollified, but his voice is still sulky when he says, “Yes, mother.”

He wanders back to his brother, shaking his head, and Malcolm’s shoulders droop too.

“They’re very well-behaved,” Jaime says, though the boys have now plopped themselves down and are sullenly sifting through rocks for seashells. 

Brienne laughs and it sings through Jaime like nothing else. It’s the first one he’s heard from her since arriving on Tarth and when he looks over, she’s actually grinning wide enough to show her broken teeth and the way the scar on her cheek stops that side of her mouth short. Jaime will fight anyone who dares tell him she’s not glorious in her happiness.

“You choose this moment to tell me my children are well-behaved?” she asks him with a shake of her head.

He smiles ruefully. “Not to expose myself too much, but I wouldn’t have asked permission first.” 

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” she says, but it’s lighter. 

“And I suppose you always asked permission first?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow, not even needing to point out that the first female knight couldn’t possibly have asked permission for all things.

“Well,” she says, low and round and inviting somehow, “perhaps not always.” 

There’s a small, nearly conspiratorial smile on her face before she faces the water once again, but he thinks something has shifted. It feels like the sun has come out, warming him in a way that he hasn’t felt since he sailed west of Ghaen. 


	8. Chapter 8

When Jaime enters her solar, she stands from her desk and hopes that she’s not flushed red from her cheeks to her chest.

“Jaime,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound half so nervous as she feels. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course.” He smiles, more easily now than when he first arrived, she thinks. “It’s not as if I have anything better than to come when my lady calls.”

_Oh, for Seven’s…_

She rolls her eyes. “I have something for you,” she says, thankful that he’s managed to obliterate any tension. She walks toward the door leading into her bedchamber, gesturing for him to follow before she thinks better of it. 

She hadn’t intended to invite him in, but then, he always seems to find his way into places he wasn’t meant to be. 

Brienne retrieves Widow’s Wail from its place over her mantel. Oathkeeper looks strangely bare without her sister sword crossed over her. The sword had been her one concession after her marriage, the one thing she allowed herself, justifying it as a tribute to the Starks, both Catelyn and then Sansa, the women she pledged herself to. 

She may have shared her bed with a bear, but there was always a lion above her hearth. 

She takes a breath and turns to face Jaime, holding the sword horizontal in her hands. He’s looking around her room with a curious expression, but he seems to sense her gaze on him because he looks at her. Her breath catches when their eyes do. She closes the distance between them, standing close enough that he doesn’t have to reach for the sword.

Jaime’s hand hovers above the pommel but it takes him a moment to touch it, even then, he only rests his hand lightly on it. 

“This is yours,” he says quietly, looking up from the sword. “I gave it to you.”

“For safekeeping,” she says. “You couldn’t take it with you, but now--”

“No,” he interrupts her, gently. “I _gave_ it to you.”

 _Oh_.

“Jaime…”

“You have two sons,” he says, though she thinks the light tone may be affected. “Let one carry Oathkeeper and the other Widow’s Wail. They were once Ned Stark’s sword; they should remain with the family that swore allegiance to the Stark family.”

“But--”

“Brienne,” Jaime says, sounding as exasperated as she’s ever felt with him, “if nothing else, it is my sword to do with as I please. I want you to set it aside for Declan. I have no sons of my own and it would please me to leave it to yours.”

“You may yet.”

Jaime smiles a bit ruefully. “An old man like me? No, I think I can safely say the sword will be Declan’s when I am gone.”

“Men far older than you have sired children,” Brienne points out. “It’s not the same for men as it is for women, as you well know.”

“Even so, I don’t have much to recommend me,” Jaime says. “I’m a one-handed, infamous, currently penniless man who just returned from being away long enough that he was presumed dead. My prospects are grim.”

“Pardon me for saying it, but you are still, and will always be, Goldenhand the Just, that alone--”

Jaime flinches. He takes a step away from her and she regrets saying the words, no matter how true and well-meant.

“It’s strange,” he says absently, looking away from her. “I truly thought that being called Kingslayer was awful, that being reviled for my one true act of heroism was a punishment greater than any other I could imagine. I had dreamed of nothing more than being a knight and then to be raised to the Kingsguard--” He shakes his head. “Reviled for my one true heroic act and revered for my most cowardly, funny, isn’t it?”

It’s Brienne’s turn to flinch at the acid in his tone. 

“You did your best,” she says firmly. 

“A scathing indictment, indeed.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Jaime dismisses it all with a wave of his hand. “Be that as it may, even if all that I said wasn’t true, I’m still not interested. What would I do with some sweet, young woman?”

“Marry her,” Brienne says flatly. “Have children with her. Rebuild your legacy with her.” 

“How dull,” he says. “I thank you, but no. If I ever marry, it won’t be to someone simply for the chance at fathering children.” 

“You _are_ the last of your line--”

“And I’ve cousins aplenty to carry on the Lannister name and house,” Jaime interrupts her. “I can think of many, many worse things than Tywin Lannister’s bloodline dying out with my passing. We’ve brought very little good to the world.”

“It’s not so bad, you know,” she says quietly, turning her back on him and placing Widow’s Wail in its rightful place across Oathkeeper. “Marrying someone for duty and allowing love to follow.”

Jaime’s silent and when she finally turns to face him again, she keeps her shoulders braced against the mantel, fearing whatever she’ll find in his expression. She never knows what to expect these days. He’s always been the most mercurial of men, but instead of flashing between humor and anger, these days he seems to swing wildly from lingering sadness to--to something else entirely when he looks at her.

“Did it take you very long?” he asks, his eyes boring into her as if trying to look _through_ her. “To love your husband, I mean.”

The room closes in around her despite being a large, cavernous thing that’s felt hollow since Alec died. 

“I--” she pauses, the words catching in her throat, her heart thudding in her chest. “I’m not sure, it’s been so long now.” She knows her voice is shaking and she knows it isn’t from grief. “I liked him well enough when we married and one day, I suppose, I loved him. I think around the time I was carrying Malcolm I realized it, but there was never some grand moment when it crashed in on me.”

“Was it--” Jaime stops and shakes his head. “Forgive me, I was about to be an unforgivable arse.”

“You have grown, finally,” she says. Jaime lifts an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’ve ever once stopped yourself from being an arse. You may ask me. I doubt it’s any worse than the stuff you’ve said to me in the past.”

Jaime looks uncomfortable, but he still asks, “Was it easier when he died than when Renly died?” 

It hits her square in the stomach, a nauseating punch. 

“By which I mean,” Jaime says quickly, seeing the look on her face. “Is it easier when you’re able to love someone and live with them and say goodbye or when you lose someone you never truly had?” 

“They’re not comparable,” Brienne says numbly. “I didn’t love Renly, Jaime. I was a child. He was kind to me at a very vulnerable age and he was very handsome, but what I felt was not love, and it did not take very many years for me to understand the difference.”

Jaime looks truly regretful when he says, “My apologies. Truly. I wonder sometimes if my grief was so magnified because--”

“I would like to say something,” Brienne interrupts him. He startles, his eyebrows shooting up. She squares her shoulders. “We didn’t speak of this at the time and we, clearly, have not had a chance since. I am sorry that you had to kill your sister, but I am sorrier you had to kill the only woman you ever loved. It is a burden no man should have to bear. That they were the same woman only compounds your grief, it doesn’t lessen it. I knew you too well by that point to dismiss your love for her, so I know how it must have pained you. The grief you felt--there is nothing wrong with it. Whether she was a good person or not, you had loved her your entire life, from the moment you entered the world until the moment she left it. That is more than many men could bear and you did.” 

She’s fairly certain she could knock Jaime over with a feather, judging by the look on his face. 

“Brienne--”

“Alec was ill, a wasting disease brought from Lys on a trading ship, we think,” she says, not allowing him to fill the space with what that expression means. It makes her heart feel too odd to allow him the leave. “However, it was slow enough we were all able to say goodbye to one another and I was given leave to mourn him openly. It was very different from what you had to experience.” 

“Your sons are extraordinarily blessed,” Jaime says, gazing at her bright-eyed.

Her brow wrinkles in confusion. “I’m sorry?”

“I never knew true kindness,” he explains. “Not as a boy and certainly not as a man...not until I met you. They have the good fortune of being raised by the kindest person I have ever known.”

She can feel her face grow hot in an instant. 

“I may have you tell them that the next time they inform me how mean I am for not allowing them some freedom,” she murmurs.

Jaime’s laugh is a light, genuine thing, and it thankfully lifts the weight in the air. 

“Oh, please send them my way. If nothing else, I can tell them tales of my father. That should give them some perspective, at least.” 


	9. Chapter 9

It’s finally a sunny day and Malcolm and Declan haven’t been out of the sea for more than fifteen minutes strung together and only then to eat provisions before diving back into the waves. 

“They’re like seal pups,” Jaime observes, leaning back on his elbows and letting the sun warm his face. 

“A trait they inherited from me,” Brienne says from above him. 

He squints up at her, the sun turning her straw-colored hair nearly white. Behind her, the granite cliffs of Tarth are sharp and dark against the pale blue sky. 

“Did you learn to dive from those?” Jaime asks, nodding toward them. “I seem to remember you being quite skilled.”

Brienne turns to look where he indicated, a gentle smile on her lips. “Yes.” She turns to look down at him, and even with the sun behind her shading her face, he can tell the blue of her eyes would put the sky to shame. “My brother Galladon taught me and swore me to secrecy.”

“Were you close in age?” 

He braces for her to shy away from the topic or shutter behind carefully constructed walls. Instead, she turns toward him a bit more, angling her body so that her entire upper half is turned toward him. 

“He was eight to my four when he drowned,” she says.

“And he was already teaching you to dive from the cliffs?” Jaime asks, louder than he intends. 

Brienne _laughs_. 

_Loudly_. 

“You sound like a Septa,” she says, laughing more when he scowls at her. “If it makes you feel any better, I was likely the size you were as an eight-year-old when I was four.”

“Do you remember him?” Jaime asks, picking up a slate rock and scraping the sharp edges with his thumbnail. 

“Not much,” Brienne says softly. “More than I remember my mother, but then, she died when I was three. Of course, I don’t remember anything of my sisters.”

“Your sisters?” 

“Arianne and Alysanne,” Brienne says, her mouth drawn tight for a second. “Twins. My mother and both of them died during their birth. I suppose I wasn’t shown the babies at all.” 

“And your brother drowned the very next year?” Jaime asks, his heart twisting at the very thought of it.

Brienne nods. “I think it’s why I left, eventually,” she says. “I was a burden to my father. It wasn’t enough for him to have lost everyone, but then his one remaining family member was a freak of nature.” She drops her chin and draws a deep breath. “I’m only glad that he saw me married and Malcolm born before he died. I was able to give him some comfort at the end, finally.”

“Brienne,” he says firmly. She glances up at him, eyes wide with surprise at his tone. “I assure you, your father was proud of you regardless of your marital status. You were the first woman ever knighted in Westeros. You worked harder for that knighthood than any man could ever fathom. He would have been a fool to be anything other than proud and from everything you’ve told me, your father was no fool.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs.

He nods once, curtly and looks back to the sea, his stomach coiling up with the urge to commit violence against some unnamed enemy. Whatever it is that makes the world tell women like Brienne that they are somehow unwanted or lesser than, he wants to beat it to a bloody pulp until he feels worthwhile, relevant, useful. It’s a selfish feeling, but then, he’s a selfish man. 

They rest in silence, though it’s not as uncomfortable as Jaime expects it to be. Brienne slathers butter and cheese on bread and sets it out on a slab with fruits and salt-cured meat for the boys to pick from when they finally come ashore. 

“Help yourself,” she offers quietly. 

By the time the boys finally come onshore for good, the sun has dipped behind the cliffs entirely, leaving the inlet shaded and cool. Brienne wraps them in blankets, scrubbing them as dry as she can before they change into their other clothing. When they settle, they cram food into their mouths like starving beasts. 

Malcolm has a cheek full of cheese when he looks up and asks, “Ser Jaime?”

“Don’t speak with your mouth full of food,” Brienne warns. 

Malcolm swallows noisily. 

“Yes, Malcolm?”

“Will you tell us the story of the bear?” he asks eagerly. “The _real_ story?

Jaime does his best not to smile. “Haven’t you asked your mother about the bear?”

“Oh, we have,” Declan pipes up. “But we can’t be certain she told us the truth. She isour mother.”

“Does your mother _often_ lie to you?” Jaime asks, mocking an aghast expression, turning wide, horrified eyes on Brienne.

She glares at him.

“No!” Malcolm says hurriedly, glancing over his shoulder at Brienne. “Mother doesn’t lie. It’s only...she might have made it nicer for us. Like a bedtime story instead of the _whole_ truth.”

Jaime looks at Brienne with his eyebrows raised in question. She closes hers briefly and he can imagine her praying to The Mother for patience. Finally, she nods yes. 

“I can only tell you from my side what happened, you understand,” Jaime says. “If your mother hasn’t shared her side, I can’t force her to, and she will in her own time.”

They both nod eagerly, shifting onto their knees, their hands clutched into fists of excitement. 

“Your mother and I were traveling to King’s Landing when we were captured by very bad men,” Jaime begins. “When they attempted to hurt her, I protected her and they took my hand instead.

“Then they discovered that my father was Tywin Lannister and they knew he was very, very wealthy,” Jaime continues. “They decided to ransom me, but they wouldn’t agree to ransom your mother. I didn’t want to leave her but she gave me a very important task to do for her.

“So I rode away.”

Both boys look suitably horrified at their mother being left with terrible men. They look back at her, their mouths open in shock. She simply gestures for Jaime to continue. 

“But that very first night I had a dream of your mother. I was in a dark cave, lost and scared with only one hand, and there were ghosts hunting me, but your mother appeared to me and she had a magic sword that lit up the cave when it was with my own and together we beat back the ghosts.”

Declan gasps. “Was it Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail?” he asks excitedly, bouncing on his heels.

Jaime smiles. “Those swords hadn’t been forged when I had the dream, but I suppose, in a way, yes. When I woke up, I told the company I rode with that we had to go back for your mother. Well, I didn’t tell them it was for your mother. Simply that we had to go back to Harrenhal.

“When we arrived I could hear a great commotion and I knew something bad must be happening, so I ran toward the noise and when I arrived at the great pit, I climbed the stairs and saw that they had put your mother into the pit with a great big bear. I told them they must let your mother free, but they wouldn’t listen and that’s when I saw they had given her only a tourney sword to fight the bear with. You see, they meant to watch the bear kill your mother.”

The boys don’t say anything, but Declan does scoot over until he’s huddled with his back against Brienne. She leans over to place a kiss on the boy’s crown, but nods that Jaime should continue.

“Now, you must understand, as a knight of the realm, it was my sworn duty to protect any maids in peril--”

“ _Jaime_ ,” Brienne says warningly. 

He smirks at her before continuing. “I had no choice but to jump into the pit with her and place myself between your mother and the bear!”

“But you had no sword!” Malcolm protests.

“A minor quibble,” Jaime says, waving his hand as if to dismiss it. 

Brienne snorts and he casts a half-smile her way. 

“You see, boys, there will be moments in your lives still to come where you will be faced with choices. You won’t have time to think about these choices and reason them out, ask for advice, hold a meeting, or anything else to decide. You have to make the choice and come what may. That’s how you know the sort of person you’ll be. I jumped into the bear pit with only one hand and no sword because I couldn’t let them treat your mother as nothing more than an afternoon’s entertainment. 

“Your mother saved my life when she had no cause to and when I had given her every reason to despise me.” Jaime looks at her, savoring for a moment the warmth and depth of memory in her eyes. “And I have spent the greater part of ten years trying to prove myself worthy of her effort.” 

Jaime feels like he’s caught looking at her, the sounds of the sea and gulls and all else falling away until Declan breaks the moment by asking, “But _how_ did you get away from the bear?”

“The men who wanted money from my father for me shot it with crossbows,” Jaime says simply. “Greed is a very powerful motivator. Not the most powerful, mind, but powerful nonetheless.”

“What is the most powerful?” Malcolm asks.

Jaime opens his mouth to answer, but Brienne does before him, “Love.” 

He glances up and swears she’s glancing away at the same time, pulling Declan into a hug and running her fingers through his salt-crusted hair. 

“Your mother is right,” Jaime says, eyes still trained on her. “Love.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Jaime,” Brienne greets him, rising from her chair and gesturing for him to sit across from her. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”

Something in her tone makes the smile on his face falter. His own expression is much more serious when he replies, “Of course, Brienne, I’m at your disposal.” 

“I was hoping we might discuss your future plans,” she says, hoping she seems much calmer and steadier than she feels. “You are, of course, welcome to stay as I’ve said, but I’m sure you’ve other business to address as long as you’ve been away.” 

“Not as such,” Jaime says, his shoulders tense even as his face remains relaxed. “However, if you need me to leave, I’m sure I can find other accommodations.” 

“No, that’s not-” Brienne stops before frustration gets the better of her. “My advisors are beginning to ask questions I have no answers for. It occurs to me that I haven’t bothered to ask myself.” 

“You may ask me anything,” he says sincerely, his entire body radiating acquiescence. 

The problem, perhaps, is that she’s not sure she wants the answers. 

“How long do you plan to stay?” she asks, her pulse already stuttering at that simple question. 

“I’m not certain.” Jaime shifts minutely in his chair. 

“Do you have nothing you must attend to back--” she pauses, realizing suddenly that she has no idea _where_ he’s been since he left.

“I had nothing in Marahai except for a small home,” Jaime explains. “I fished for food and to trade for anything else I needed. When I left, I sold the house for passage back to Westeros.” 

“Jaime…” Brienne says, knowing she sounds breathless, but she can’t even form a coherent thought as she finally begins to piece together the magnitude of -- “What are doing here?” 

Jaime stares at her and the longer he looks the harder her heart beats. She can feel her pulse thumping in her temple, bringing a hot flush to her cheeks that spills down her neck to her chest. 

“I--I don’t know,” he says quietly. She thinks she can see his pulse beating rapidly against the thin skin of his throat. 

“You don’t know?” she asks, bewildered. “You left your home of the last several years on a whim?” 

“No!” he protests. He stares at her again for a prolonged, strange moment where he seems to be searching for _something_. “I kept waiting for some release to happen. I thought if I waited long enough, the burden of everything would lift and I would feel free from it all. Strangely, running away from everything fixed nothing.” 

“But why now?” she asks. “Why _here_?”

Jaime takes a slow breath before he answers. “A trading vessel was forced to stop at Marahai for repairs. They were carrying some goods from Westeros, of particular interest to myself, granite from Tarth. It felt like a sign. So, I sold the home, paid for passage on the trading vessel to Asshai and from there made my way back here.” 

“If the trading vessel had carried wine from Dorne or limestone from The Eyrie, would you be there instead?” she asks, not sure if she wants or fears his answer. 

“No,” he says, barely audible. “I would still be here.”

“ _Why_?”

“Because I didn’t leave anything left unsaid in the Eyrie or Dorne,” he says, nearly angry in his frustration. 

“And you left things unsaid here?” she asks, and oh, her traitorous heart can still trip like an eighteen-year-old maiden.

“I believe I did,” he says firmly. “I left things unsaid between the two of us.”

“Oh,” she says. She keeps expecting something further to come forth, but it doesn’t. 

She simply looks at him, at the comforting familiarity of his face, the pulse-pounding glint in his green eyes and sharp edge of his jaw.

“I still don’t--” Jaime sucks in a deep breath. “I’m still sorting it out. When I left, all I could think of was getting as far away from everything as I could. I needed to be somewhere that no one knew me, but no matter how far I traveled or how long I was away, there’s never been a time when you were far from my mind.

“I didn’t know until I was west of Ghaen about your children or your late husband,” he continues. “Not that it would have--I’m not here to cause you trouble, that was never my intent. I only needed to see you.”

“There were things that I would have said then,” she admits, “had we the time before you left.”

“The time and space,” he says.

She nods. 

“You’re very different from when I left,” he says, tilting his head slightly to peer at her. “Not--you’re the same in so many ways, but you look _comfortable_ now.”

“I am,” she says with a soft smile. “It was different after the war. For better or worse, my knighthood earned me respect. The people of Tarth were quite honored for me to represent them so strongly in battle. When I married and provided two sons to inherit, that cemented their good favor. It’s easier to be me now.” 

She realizes he’s been smiling at her for the entirety of her speech.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says with a shake of his head. “Only that I’m still sorting out what was left unsaid and how it fits into who we are now. I’m not the man I once was and I’m certain you’re not the woman I left behind.”

The way he says it as if he _left_ her...as if--but, no. 

“I’m not,” she agrees, instead, it’s easier that way. “It has been good having you here. I often wondered where you were. If you were even…”

“It was selfish of me,” he says. “But then, I’ve never claimed to be elsewise.” 

“No, you haven’t.” 

The silence that descends isn’t precisely uncomfortable, but it is heavy until Jaime finally breaks it by saying, “If you need me to leave, I will. I don’t want to make your home an unpleasant place.”

“No,” she says quickly. “No. I will--it might help if you formally agree to assist Ser Manfryd with pages and squires. You know how advisors and courtiers can be, it’s best if they don’t see a shred of humanity peeking through.” 

“Of course,” Jaime says. “I would more than happy to assist Ser Manfryd. I never thought I would want to see a training yard again, much less take up a sword myself, but I find their enthusiasm bolstering.” He hesitates, looking over her shoulder and wrinkling his brow in concentration for a moment before meeting her eyes once more. “I know it might make things even more uncomfortable for you with your advisors but I would like to spend time with you.”

Brienne opens her mouth to say something, but Jaime beats her to it. 

“Not time spent with your children or sparring with swords in the training yard,” he says. “Time spent talking. I’ve said as much before, but I will repeat myself now, I would like to know the woman you became in my absence. I would know the Brienne of Tarth that wears the mantle of Evenstar, knight and mother with equal aplomb.”

She wants that, too. She wants to know the man that spent years on an island fishing for his own food, with not a penny to his name, and at that, a name no one cared to know. She wants to know how that man and the man she still recognizes in front of her can be one and the same. She thinks he wants to know the same of her. 

She thinks it’s likely more dangerous than any physical battle to invite him close in such a way.

Yet, she still finds herself saying, “I would like that as well.” 

She blushes at the happy expression on his face and relaxed grace of his limbs as he levers himself out of the chair, mocking a half-bow. “Thank you for your time, Ser.” 

Then he _winks_ and departs before she can scold him or _worse_. 


	11. Chapter 11

It’s taken Jaime a very long time to realize he doesn’t know the first thing about love. 

Nearly forty-five years to put a harder number to it. He realizes now that he had so few examples to go off of and of the ones he did have, they were all corrupt. He supposes that his mother loved him, but he only remembers her in bits and pieces, a scent that smells like comfort or a song that sounds like warmth. He doesn’t know if Tywin ever loved him or his siblings, if so, he was never remotely demonstrable with it and Jaime never felt it. 

Jaime has always believed he loved Tyrion, but when forced to choose, he never chose Tyrion not even when Tyrion was a mere babe. He knows now: that’s not love, not truly.

Then, of course, Cersei. Cersei, his great love, the one he chose above all others until he couldn’t. He remembers so distinctly the _madness_ of it; the _pain_ and pleasure and torture and transcendence of loving Cersei eclipsed all else in his existence. There was never anything to compare it to, never anything to make him question that it _was_ real love. 

It wasn’t until he was standing before her, the green of her eyes no longer matching his own, but a reflection of the wildfire consuming a city he lost everything to save, that he knew it had never been love. 

After ten years spent with only his thoughts and strangers he shared no common tongue with, he thinks maybe when they were children and the world was simpler--maybe then she loved him in truth, but adulthood and court twisted them both until it was something dark and vicious. 

It doesn’t become truly clear until he’s on Tarth and he watches the way Brienne is with her children, the warmth and welcome when she sees them...it’s not effusive, it’s part of her very being, like the very air she breathes. 

_That’s_ love. 

The mere reflection of that feeling in his own chest makes him understand what he’s missed his entire existence. 

It makes him think about what he missed when it was right in front of him, simply because he didn’t recognize it.

He’s been an idiot his entire life, his father made that plain enough, but he thinks it’s finally possible for him to get something right in his miserable life. 

He hopes.

\--

Malcolm bounds across the training yard to Brienne after lessons are done for the day, wooden sword still in hand to show her a new bit of footwork Jaime taught him earlier. He fumbles through it, but Brienne smiles nonetheless and tells him in time he’ll get it just right. He beams at her and nods.

Jaime can’t help but wonder who he would be as a person today if anyone had shown him even a fraction of that unwavering acceptance and support in his youth. 

Brienne looks up from Malcolm, a soft smile still on her lips when her eyes catch Jaime’s. He expects it to drop for some reason, or at least for her to draw herself into the more composed visage of Evenstar he’s grown to recognize the past several weeks. It doesn’t, though, she simply sets a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder and says, “Walk with me, Ser Jaime?”

“As you wish, Ser Brienne,” he says, _very_ seriously. 

“You and Declan have lessons with Septon Wyllis now,” Brienne reminds Malcolm. “I won’t tolerate tardiness and neither will the Septon.” 

“Yes, Mother,” Malcolm says, his enthusiasm only marginally dimmed. 

Jaime watches the boy herd his younger brother up a staircase, somewhere along the way turning it into a race to the schoolroom. There’s a smile on his face by the time he looks up to see Brienne standing at his shoulder. Sometimes, more often than not of late, he finds himself simply _looking_ at her to see her. He’s not searching for an answer to something; not attempting to interpret the meaning of an expression; certainly, no longer trying to find fault in her features. 

He very plainly likes to see her face. He likes how calm it is now after years of peace and motherhood and the security of true leadership. He likes how bright and happy her eyes are now, instead of only gut-wrenchingly blue. He likes how her thick lips are soft and full now, instead of hardened and chapped by cold bitter winds and not enough water. He especially likes that she holds her chin up now, her hair held back in a simple plait and not hanging around her as if for protection. 

She blinks and it’s as if a spell is broken. 

“I have a council meeting I must attend,” she says, her voice a touch harried. “But I was hoping you would walk with me so that we could talk.”

“Of course,” Jaime says. “I am ever at your disposal.” 

He says it every time and her mouth twists in annoyance and a hint of amusement every time. 

She turns to the staircase at the far side of the yard and beckons Jaime to follow her. 

“How are you enjoying your position with Ser Manfryd?”

“He’s a good teacher,” Jaime says, meaning it fully. “Very firm, but encouraging when he should be. I think the boys and girls admire him greatly.” 

“That’s all well and good, but I asked how _you_ were enjoying your position.”

“Oh,” Jaime says, a little taken aback. “I haven’t much thought of it. Ser Manfryd is easy to get along with and as we already discussed, I enjoy teaching the children far more than I imagined I would. And, I cannot state this strong enough, they manage to make me feel like something more than a complete and utter failure.”

“Well as long as the children are in service to _your_ ego--” 

Jaime laughs before she finishes her thought. She glares at him, but there’s no true heat or judgment in it, and he knows he’s not mistaken that her lips curl up at the corners when she looks away again. 

“Come now,” he says. “I have little enough left. It’s not as if I’m in my prime and taking pleasure at besting a six-year-old.” 

“As long as you’re actually teaching them and not crowing over the fact that you can beat any living creature, I suppose I’ll allow it.”

“You wound me.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“You could always keep my ego in check by sparring with me in the evenings,” Jaime offers, dropping his voice though there’s hardly anything secret about it. 

Agreeing to assist Ser Manfryd and ‘earn his keep’ around Evenfall had the extremely unfortunate consequence of putting a stop to his and Brienne’s early morning sparring sessions, though to call it sparring would be incredibly generous to him and very insulting to her. 

Brienne doesn’t answer right away. Jaime still can’t tell if it’s a foreboding sign, or simply her thinking through a set of responses to pick the most appropriate, or if she--

She stops in the hall and turns to face him. He does the same, eyebrows lifted, only to find her looking down at him with the strangest expression on her face. Her eyebrows knit together as if in concentration, but her lips still soft and ever-so-slightly open. There’s a faint flush of pink on her cheeks and she swallows heavily. 

Jaime’s heart is pounding so heavily in his chest, he can feel it in the soles of his feet, and for the life of him he can’t figure out precisely why this particular moment feels groundbreaking. He’s sucking in huge breaths of air as if he’s run up several flights of stairs, when all he’s done is leisurely stroll up one set and down a couple of hallways. 

“Brienne?” he asks, murmurs, more like.

She blinks rapidly, her shoulders quickly rising with an indrawn breath. “Very well,” she says, nearly stern. “We can meet after supper in the evening, if that suits.”

_If that…_

“Of course,” Jaime agrees, still befuddled. “That would suit me well.” 

“Good.” 

She nods curtly, turns, and begins to walk once more, leaving Jaime to trail in her wake like a very confused duckling. 


	12. Chapter 12

Even now, Jaime is a different man the minute a sword is in his hand. 

He’s very different from when he left in myriad ways. It would take Brienne years to catalogue, long enough that the list would become redundant before its natural end. When he left her standing on a rocky outcrop near the ruins of King’s Landing, his hair close shorn, his fine leathers exchanged for rougher fibers, there was an inhuman tension about him. She remembers thinking that he might crack like a vase shoved to the ground, the sudden impact of the floor sending fissures through its carefully crafted lines and curves. 

She can still remember the exact smell of burnt flesh and land tangled up with the murky humidity of Blackwater Bay; it makes the bile rise in her throat to even think of it. 

He had placed Widow’s Wail in her arms, stepping close enough she had no choice but to accept the burden of its weight. 

“Keep it,” he’d said roughly, a haunted look in his eyes. 

He’d stepped back and walked away from her, never giving her time to gather a response. It wasn’t until he’d reached the ship that he turned back and said, “I’m sorry.”

For ten years, she’d every reason to believe those were the last words she would ever hear from him.

The words that trip from his gilded tongue are different now. They aren’t as sharp nor as coded as they were when he was last in Westeros. It’s taken her weeks to accept that Jaime is, quite simply, not the man that left with nary a goodbye nearly a lifetime ago. It makes sense, she’s certainly not the same woman, but it’s still strange to try and merge the two very distinct Jaime Lannisters in her mind. 

The strangest of all is how familiar he is. Like now, with the sword in his hand and that glint in his green eyes, a curl to his lips that makes her blood sing with danger, no matter how unpracticed he is or how blunt their blades.

He parries quickly, more than she expects. She blocks him easily, but there’s a split second where she’s startled and _oh_. 

She beats him easily, several times, before he finally yields, bent in half and panting. Still, he tips his head back and smirks at her, just as insolent and, if she’s honest, beautiful as ever. 

It’s when he’s taking a long drink from the barrel of water that she finally musters up the gumption to speak. 

“You said you wished to know the woman I’ve become.”

“I did,” he confirms.

“I should like to know the man you’ve become,” she says. 

The smile that slowly pulls at his mouth isn’t like one she’s ever seen from him. It’s a gentle pleasure, one that doesn’t speak of anything except...relief, she thinks. 

“I’m an open book, milady,” he says, an eyebrow twitching as if he’s trying to prevent a smirk from slipping through.

She’s tempted to roll her eyes, though it is somewhat a comfort that he can’t quite stop himself from needling her, and even more than that, she doesn’t so much mind the teasing anymore. 

“I believe you said you were in Marahai for a time?” she asks, though in truth she remembers well enough. It’s an odd place for him to have landed. 

“For much of the time I was away,” he confirms, walking over to a low wall and half-sitting, half-leaning on it. 

She follows, sitting close enough to feel his warmth but not quite touch. “What is it like?” 

“It’s quite beautiful,” he says. “The sailors on the first ship told me tale that it was once more than three times as large as the Isle of Elephants until the Great Dragon burst from its center, leaving it a burning ring of ash and molten rock that burned for more than a thousand years, but that it was now thriving with life, except for vents of steam to remind the people of what birthed their land.”

Brienne watches his eyes go distant at the remembrance of his journey, the pain still evident in the creases around his eyes. 

“It lies in the Jade Sea, the waters just as green as the waters around your isle are blue. It seems that every inch of land is a cliff on top of another cliff. The houses are bright clay that looks as if they were carved straight from the cliffs. It’s wet like the Stormlands but hot as Dorne, miserable, really for a Westerlands lad like myself, but I acclimated.”

By the end of that speech, he’s smiling again, almost wistful. 

“You said you fished?” she asks softly.

He looks over, not quite startled to see her. “I did. I think the locals took pity on me. I looked a good bit worse than when I arrived here. They gave me a harness that allowed me to cast and reel in one-handed. It took a while, but I got quite good by the end of my time there.”

“And you liked it?”

His expression changes into something deeper, something searching. “I liked it well enough. It gave me time to think and sort some things out that I wouldn’t have been able to while I was here. I think I needed it, even if I shouldn’t have been allowed it.”

“Everyone deserves the space to heal,” Brienne says quietly but emphatically. 

“Even a Kingslayer, Queenslayer, and kinslayer?” he asks, she can tell he’s trying to quip, but it comes out flat anyway. “I’ve certainly done almost everything a man can do to make himself unworthy.”

“Jaime...” she says despairingly. 

“I don’t think a zero-sum on cities saved counts,” he says before she can continue. “I may have saved the population of King’s Landing at one point, but I let it burn before my very eyes not twenty years on. I may have killed a mad Queen, but she was also my own blood, and not until she murdered a half-million people, at least. My baby brother was led to his slaughter by the daughter of the Mad King that I destroyed a Kingdom by killing. I nearly killed Bran Stark for being a curious child. My own children died one-by-one for the sins of their parents. The Starks you served so loyally were decimated by my kin--”

He’s becoming more heated the longer his list of sins becomes. She reaches out, gripping his arm before she thinks better of it, nearly jerking him to her to stop his tirade. 

“Stop!” she commands him as if he is one of her sons. He looks at her, wild-eyed, haunted, like he’s come back to himself from some far off place. “I’ll not sit here and tell you that you were always the best of men, but you were more than a list of your worst moments. You lost your hand to save a woman holding you captive. You fought one-handed against an Army of otherworldly, undead monsters to save an untold number of nameless people who would never know if you died for them. You saved an entire city at the cost of your entire identity. Yes, that same city and its people were lost to us at the hands of your sister, but you couldn’t have stopped it, Jaime. You couldn’t.” 

“I knew she had the wildfire,” he whispers miserably, his voice shaking around the words. 

Brienne closes her eyes and draws a shuddering breath, still feeling the loss and pain that she did the moment she saw him stumbling through the camp after he killed Cersei, the emptiness in his eyes was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. 

“You didn’t _know_ ,” she insists. “I know what it is to love someone, to truly love them, and you could never love her and think her that monstrous. It was an incomprehensible, _insane_ thing she did and it was _not_ your fault. You stopped her before she did even more damage, at great cost to yourself.”

He stares at her for so long she begins to wonder if he’s retreated within. She’s seen other men after the traumas of war do the same, but then he blinks at her and almost pained disbelief floods his expression. “How?”

“I’m sorry?” she asks, utterly confused.

“How can you still--” He shakes his head. “How are you still so kind after _everything_ you’ve seen?” 

“Because—” Brienne starts then stumbles. No one has ever demanded she explain something so intrinsic to her very being. “The Red Woman was fond of saying the night is dark and full of terror. I’ve found that to be true, but no matter how long the night, dawn still breaks with time.”

Suddenly, he’s nearer than she expected him to be, and for one breathless, endless moment she thinks he means to kiss her. 

She doesn’t know how she would react if he did.

Instead, his chin drops and his breath blows heavy and humid across her shoulder. 

“My apologies,” he murmurs. “I did not intend to become so emotional.”

“I don’t mind if you’re emotional,” she says just as quietly, turning her mouth until it’s almost pressed against his damp hair. “But the past cannot be changed. You chose to live, to do so you have to accept that you cannot answer for your entire family’s crimes. They are many and not all of the blood is on your hands. You did not burn King’s Landing to the ground and you are not the first person to be fallible in the face of love and family. 

“I am here to listen, but I did not blame you then. Time and reflection have done nothing more than solidify that opinion. If you need a judge, jury, and executioner, I’m certain there’s someone that should suffice, but you’ll not find them here and it certainly won’t be me.”

He gazes at her with something approaching worship. “Yes, Ser.” 

The way he says it settles warm low in her stomach and makes her cheeks flush red. 

She stands and steps away from him before she can do something horribly rash. She points toward the yard with the tip of her sword. “Again,” she says, commands. 

“Yes, Ser,” he repeats, but at least this time it’s teasing. 


	13. Chapter 13

Jaime spends his mornings with Brienne’s sons--and the other children too, of course, but he watches hers more and he can’t make himself feel guilty for it. He didn’t see anything of her in them when he first came to Tarth, but that changes more every day. Malcolm has all of her determination and Declan all of her kindness. Declan’s mouth does, after all, resemble what Brienne’s must have as a small child and Malcolm, though Brienne never mentioned it, has the shape of her eyes if not the color. 

More than any of those physical features are the smaller things, the mannerisms they’ve copied from her without meaning to. Malcolm turns a furious shade of red at the slightest mistake, though he never pouts or grumbles. Declan has a bad habit of sucking his lower lip between his teeth and worrying it until it cracks and bleeds. 

He wonders more and more which of their features and gestures come from their father. 

He spends his evenings sparring with Brienne in the same training yard, allowing her to beat him to a near-bloody pulp for the sheer joy of watching her move so smoothly, dominate him so effortlessly. She may even be better than when he left. She continues to ask him mild questions about Marahai and the journey to Marahai, things that won’t dig too deep. He asks questions about where people are now, not where everyone has been. 

It rankles though, the more time he spends with Malcolm and Declan and the more they avoid any topic that matters whatsoever to either of them. 

They’ve stopped for a drink of water and, in truth, so Jaime can catch his breath. He sits on the ground so he can rest his back against the low stone wall, slumping lazily and allowing his muscles to relax as much as they can. He’s a little surprised when Brienne sits next to him, her legs crossed at the ankle in front of her. 

“Am I permitted to ask about your late husband?” he asks, resisting the urge to worry at a loose thread in his roughspun breeches. 

The only way he can tell that Brienne hesitates is the slight hitch in the ladle of water on its way to her mouth. “You are.” 

With that, Jaime suddenly has no idea where to begin. It seems strange to think of someone sharing Brienne’s life so intimately, though it likely shouldn’t. In truth, he and Brienne were scarcely in one another’s presence more than a year, yet it feels like -- something indefinable. Her existence changed the course of his in inconceivable ways, it seems ludicrous that it happened in so short a time. 

Jaime can’t decide if Brienne looks amused or bemused by his sudden recalcitrance.

“Was it a long courtship?” he asks hesitantly.

For some reason, that makes her laugh softly.

“No,” she says. “It was not. It was quite short.”

“Oh,” Jaime says. 

He has absolutely no idea what he’s attempting to do or what purpose his questions serve. He doesn’t know what he wants to know about this man or if he even _does_ want to know about the man that Brienne loved. 

Brienne sighs and he looks over, focusing on her face, calm except for her firm mouth and tense jaw. She seems to take pity on him. “Would you like me to tell you about him?”

“Please,” Jaime says. “I do want to know, but I’ve little enough experience to know what to ask.”

Brienne hums in acknowledgment before looking away from him, sucking her lower lip between her teeth in a familiar gesture of discomfort.

“I only spent another month or two in King’s Landing after you left, helping to clear bodies and move rubble as best as we could, but it left me feeling...hollow, I suppose. The entire city was a graveyard. It stank of decay and smoke and the odor of too many bodies with too little water and time for bathing. Lady Sansa told me she needed service of me in the North, though to this day, I do not know if she fabricated the entirety of it because she sensed I need respite or not.

“There was less to dismantle and re-build in Winterfell, as you’ll remember, and most was done by the time I arrived, but Lady Sansa insisted I remain. After all, I was her sworn sword, and I should do as she commanded.”

At that, Brienne smiles softly and for the first time, Jaime wishes he had stayed long enough to return to Winterfell with her if only to see her attempt to ward off Sansa Stark’s attempts to be a caretaker. 

“I had been there less than a month when Lady Sansa called me to her solar and informed me that Alec Mormont had asked after me. It’s not so interesting, truly. He was far removed from an inheritance of any real worth and I was in need of a husband, eventually. I agreed to meet him as Lady Sansa swore he was a good man and she would not lie to me about such if she knew better.

“We met. He told me in no uncertain terms why he thought we should be wed and so we were about a month onward. We spent another half-year in Winterfell and on Bear Island with his family before returning to Tarth where we stayed except for the occasional journey north.”

“The end?” Jaime asks, a sharp edge to his tone that surprises him nearly as much as it seems to Brienne. 

Her mouth slacks as she stares at him with wide eyes, murky with a mixture of hurt and anger and disbelief at his comment. 

“Forgive me,” he murmurs. “I’m not certain why I said that.”

He thinks he might know; he thinks there’s no good that can come of it. 

Brienne looks away from him, but she doesn’t leave, just rolls her shoulders forward as if to protect from whatever barb Jaime will fling her way next.

“He was a good husband?” Jaime asks. 

“Yes,” she says softly. 

“Kind to you and the boys?”

“Always.”

“He respected you?”

“Yes.”

For some reason, Jaime can feel the frustration building underneath his skin with every one of her single word answers. He just wants _something_. Some kernel of her life that he missed, something to help him draw the map between where he left her and where he’s found her. 

“And did he make you see stars every time you laid together?” he asks bitterly.

She does shove off the ground then, staring down at him so red with fury, it might as well be ten years before on some desolate road between Riverrun and King’s Landing. 

“What in the name of all seven gods gives you the right to--”

“I don’t know!” he interrupts her. Then more quietly, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you want from me?”

“I don’t _know_.” He shrugs helplessly. “I--gods, I want to know about the man you spent your life with, the man that fathered your children, the man that was with you when--”

He stops just short of saying, ‘when I wasn’t,’ because, of course, he has no right to and never did. He has no right to think it even now. 

Brienne doesn’t make him finish the thought. She looks at him, her angered disappointment bleeding into pity before she sits back down, though not nearly as close as before.

“He was as humorous as Jon Snow on a serious day, as sweet as a Dornish pepper, and as soft as the granite cliffs that make up Tarth,” she says ironically. 

Jaime huffs a laugh. “He sounds like a prize.” 

“He was also very kind, faithful, intelligent,” she trails off. “None of it really matters. He was my partner. The first day we met, he told me that he needed my land and my money, but that as much as that was true, it was only as true as the fact that he had never admired another swordsman’s skill with the blade. Not a woman’s. A swordsman’s. He said he had no idea what he’d do married to a soft lady that didn’t reach for her sword at the least sign of trouble.

“Other girls get flowers and songs, they get pretty words,” Brienne says so softly, it’s nearly a whisper. “I knew that was never for me, but I never dreamed there would be a man who would honestly say that he _wanted_ me because I was a knight. He never laid a hand on me in anger. He never tried to break me. He never spoke to me cruelly of my looks or my lack of womanly skills and shape. We sparred together and he didn’t mind that he usually lost.

“It took a long time to view him as more than a good man and a smart choice.” At that she looks up at Jaime finally, her fingers twisted together in her lap, her eyes shining with distant sadness laced with love. “I did, though. I loved him. I mourned him greatly and the boys even more than I, but I’m the Evenstar, I did my mourning in private. I don’t have womenfolk friends to hold my hands and weep softly with me about my lost husband. I cried in private and comforted my children and tried to show Tarth that I was unbreakable. I _was_ unbreakable, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to speak of him.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaime says uselessly, breathless at the emotion and wave of information from Brienne.

Brienne shakes her head. “Don’t mock him or joke about him. My marriage was not a jape.”

“I do realize that,” he says. “I do. I don’t--it’s strange. Most of the people I cared about at all died in the war. I have no family left, not even nieces or nephews. If I do, they’re cousins I never knew, really. I never had many friends to speak of, not that would be concerned with me after I left.” He looks down at where her hands are still clasped loosely on her legs. He wants to reach out and take hold of one of them, feel her cool skin and rough palms, and remember what it was like to feel the warmth of comfort from another person. “But you lived,” he says quietly. “You lived and you had an entire life that I missed. It makes me…”

“Sad?” Brienne guesses. 

Jaime shrugs. “I suppose in some part. I’m very happy you lived, but it’s strange to think of the people you--” he pauses and swallows and searches for a word that encompasses what Brienne was to him then and is to him now. He never had a word and he can’t think to pick one now in such a dangerously aching moment. “The people you’re close to having a life that you have no knowledge of.”

“You had an entire life without my knowledge as well,” she says. Though, for her, it sounds less pathetic and much more like she’s seconds away from patting him on the shoulder or combing her fingers through his hair like he’s one of her sons. 

He snorts. “I fished and let my hair grow too long and burnt my skin until it turned as brown as cowhide. That’s hardly the same as marriage and children.”

“Perhaps not,” she allows. “But as I’ve told you, the past is the past. We all make our choices and live with the consequences for better or worse.” 

Jaime hums and they lapse into a silence that actually feels comfortable again, which somehow rankles him just as much if not more.

“Was he handsome?” Jaime asks. 

“I thought so, yes,” Brienne answers with a smile.

“But only you?” He lifts an eyebrow.

“Not everyone can have good looks known throughout an entire country, Jaime,” she says flatly but there’s an amused twisted to her mouth.

He grins broadly. “Are you saying I’m handsome?”

“I’m saying that when you were my age, you were very handsome,” she mumbles and shoves to her feet once more. “Come. It’s growing late. Either you feel well enough to practice more or I’m going to retire for bed.”

Jaime grumbles but manages to creak to his feet, all aching knees and hips. “Only one more round, milady. I fear this ugly, old, decrepit man is nearing the end of his strength for one day.”

Brienne rolls her eyes at him, but she still has the barest hint of a smile on her lips as she takes her stance and lifts her sword once more.


	14. Chapter 14

“Is Ser Jaime coming with us to the beach?” Malcolm asks. 

The question shouldn’t surprise Brienne, yet it does. Seeing Jaime with her sons...it’s not unsettling, but it is odd. Both of them look at Jaime with admiration, no longer as the once faceless legend of Goldenhand the Just, but as their teacher who shows them endless patience in correcting their form and encouragement in pointing out when they’ve done well. 

“Would you like him to?”

Malcolm doesn’t answer immediately and Brienne glances down to find him with his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. Malcolm has always been her careful child, a serious boy who thinks before speaking. 

“I like Ser Jaime,” he says slowly, as if he’s puzzling something out. “He’s very nice,” he says the final word as if he’s determined something important. “Declan likes him, too.”

“Ser Jaime is very nice,” she agrees, managing not to laugh at the notion of any child labeling Jaime Lannister as anything so tame as ‘nice’. 

“Do _you_ like Ser Jaime?” Malcolm looks up at her, his mouth still a firm line of concentration. 

“I do,” Brienne confirms. “Ser Jaime is an old friend.”

Malcolm doesn’t say anything further, but he still looks unsettled. Brienne gives him a moment before saying, “Is there something you wish to ask? You know you may ask me anything.”

He looks up at her, worry heavy in his eyes. “Did Father like Ser Jaime?”

It takes all of Brienne’s hard-earned training and composure not to stumble or show her reaction. 

“Your father didn’t know Ser Jaime,” she explains. “I didn’t meet him until after Ser Jaime left Westeros.”

“Oh,” he says, his mouth twisting to one side. 

“Are you asking for a particular reason?” she asks as gently as she can, something unpleasant and queer twisting in her stomach.

“It’s only--” he starts but then stops and glances up at her nervously. He looks around the busy yard, his small shoulders tensing along with his jaw. 

“Do you want to talk in my room?” she asks, crouching so she’s eye-level with him. 

He nods, biting down on the inside of his lip. She resists the urge to kiss his forehead, knowing he won’t thank her for it. He hit the point of scowling at her public affection shortly after his eighth name day and the last thing she wants is to upset him any further than whatever he’s brewed in his mind. 

She leads him into her solar in silence, shutting the door gently behind them, and turning her desk chair so that she can face him. She draws him forward by his hands, clasping them loosely and looking him in the eye. 

“Are you worried that you’ll upset me?” she asks him softly. 

He shrugs his shoulders, struggling not to break eye contact. 

“I promise I won’t be,” she says. “Anything you need to ask, you may. I won’t be angry.”

“Declan asked me if it was okay to want another father,” Malcolm admits, shoulders curled forward, eyeing Brienne as if still worried about her reaction. 

“Oh.” It’s not a punch to the gut, nothing so dramatic, but it does ache deep within Brienne. “Did you answer him?”

He nods but doesn’t offer his answer. 

“Will you tell me?” she asks.

“I told him I wanted one, too,” he says as if admitting some grave sin.

Brienne does draw him to her then, wrapping him into a hug. He tucks his forehead against her neck like he did when he was a much smaller boy, his breath shuddering warm and damp against her skin. She finger-combs his short, fine hair giving him a moment to compose himself. Giving herself a moment. 

“I know you miss your father,” she says. “I miss him very much, too. Every day.”

“You do?” Malcolm murmurs, not pulling away from her. 

“Of course,” she says. “Sometimes, you love someone so much you will always miss them. Not as much as when they first go, but it’s all right to always miss them.”

Malcolm goes still and then draws away, a curious look in his eyes. 

“What?” she asks.

“Do you _think_ Father would like Ser Jaime if he was here?” 

It’s a question that doesn’t require a genuine, thought-out answer for a child, certainly not one as young as Malcolm and not when the answer isn’t of any consequence. “I’m sure he would,” Brienne says. 

Perhaps it’s a lie. She has a hard time imagining Alec and Jaime occupying the same space, much less speaking to one another. They could not be more different if they tried; Alec, dark and serious and safe; Jaime, golden and laughing and dangerous. 

“Does it concern you to think he wouldn’t?” she asks him. 

Malcolm nods, looking over Brienne’s shoulder as he shifts uncomfortably for a moment. “Is Ser Jaime going to stay?”

“Malcolm,” she says firmly but kindly. “Why are you so concerned with Ser Jaime?” He drops his eyes to the ground, shoulders rolling forward as well. “Do you not want him to stay?”

“No!” he says, head darting up to stare at her wide-eyed. “I want Ser Jaime to stay. It’s only--it’s only that he spends a lot of time with you.”

Brienne’s eyebrows draw together in confusion now. “He does. We’re old friends and comrades and he knows no one else on the island.”

“But he also comes to the beach with us and sits at our table for supper,” he says.

“He does,” she agrees readily.

“And he spars with you every night,” he says, nearly vehemently.

Brienne lifts an eyebrow. “He does.”

“Just as Father did.”

“ _Oh_.” Her stomach plummets to her feet as she stares at Malcolm. It must be bad form to gape at one’s child like a fish, and yet. 

“Declan asked me if Ser Jaime was going to marry you,” he says in a rush. “Because he’s a knight from the legends and he saved you from the bear like you were a maiden. In the stories, knights always marry the maidens they save from danger.”

Brienne tries to calm her racing heart, the way it throbs in her ears. “What did you tell him?”

He shrugs again. “I told him I didn’t know.”

She knows she has to tell him something, anything, really, that will soothe the worried creases from his forehead. She takes a breath and lets it out slowly. 

“Ser Jaime is not here to court me,” she tells him. “He did save me from the bear, but Ser Jaime isn’t a legend any more than I am a delicate maiden. He is a knight the same as I and I saved his life as often as he saved mine.”

“He said that,” he says. “Well, he said you saved his life _more_ than he saved yours.”

Brienne can’t help the half-smile that pulls at the corner of her lips.

“I’ll speak with your brother about Ser Jaime,” she says, cupping his cheek. “Perhaps, someday, I will wish to marry again. If I do, I’ll only marry someone who will treat you and your brother as his own sons, but he will never try to replace the memory of your father.”

Malcolm throws himself against her, arms wrapped tightly around her middle, burrowing into her the same as he did when he was a babe. 

Finally, he asks, “ _Can_ Ser Jaime come with us to the beach?” 

Brienne doesn’t snort, but it’s a near thing. Oh, to have the swiftly changing moods of a young child. 

“If you can find him, you may ask him,” she says. “He may be too busy, so if he says no, you must accept that as his answer.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Malcolm wriggles out of her grip and darts out of the door with nary a goodbye wave. 

Brienne lets herself sit there for a moment, taking the deep breaths her body has craved the entire conversation. She wishes her hands wouldn’t shake, that her heart wouldn’t beat so frantically. She wishes that not a single part of her wished she had a different answer for her son. 


	15. Chapter 15

Jaime has developed a shadow since coming to Tarth. A small shadow, about four feet tall, with shaggy brown hair and a permanently chapped bottom lip. 

Of course, unlike most shadows, this one is rarely quiet. Declan is fond of both narrating his own day and asking Jaime seemingly every single question that crosses his mind. If anyone had asked Jaime before the last several weeks, he likely would have said he would hate having a small child underfoot chattering away incessantly, but strangely, he finds he doesn’t mind Declan’s rampant and unending enthusiasm for everything. 

He’s also become astonishingly good at tuning out the majority of Declan’s ramblings, which saves some portion of his sanity. Still, he doesn’t mind so much when Declan asks about being a knight and fighting in battles or what the east is like and if the Jade Sea is really as green as the stories say. 

“Ser Jaime?” Declan asks, interrupting his own monologue about his lessons for the day. 

“Yes?” Jaime glances up from the sword he’s polishing to find Declan sitting cross-legged in front of him, far too innocent-faced to be trusted. 

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

It’s an innocent enough question and certainly not one that a child as young as Declan could mean to be pointed, but it stings all the same. 

“I did once,” Jaime says. “My brother and sister both perished in the Battle for King’s Landing.”

“Oh.” Declan’s small mouth turns down in a deep frown. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s quite all right,” Jaime reassures him. “It was a long time ago.”

“You don’t miss them?” Declan asks, tilting his head, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. 

The fact that Jaime has to look away from a child lest he feel too exposed should be humiliating, but he left humiliation behind many moons ago. “I do,” Jaime says. “But it doesn’t make me as sad anymore.”

It’s the truth and it isn’t, but even Jaime doesn’t understand his own grief, much less how to explain the complicated tangle of betrayal and love and distance and everything else that marred and twisted his relationship with both Tyrion and Cersei. 

Declan’s face is still scrunched in thought when he asks, “Are your mother and father dead, too?”

“They are,” Jaime confirms. “My father died during the war,” a simplification if there ever was one, “and my mother died when I was just a little older than you are now.”

“Do you miss _her_?” Declan asks. 

Jaime stares at him, at the strangely suspended expression of hope. Not, perhaps, that he doesn’t miss his mother at all, but that finally someone has the exact information that Declan craves. 

He hesitates before saying anything. He well knows that Alec is still very present for both boys and for Brienne. The last thing he wants to do is--well, anything. It’s not his place to influence Brienne’s children about their father or how they feel about their father’s death. 

“I don’t much remember her,” Jaime says. “I was very sad when she first died.” That much he remembers being true, the feeling of loss, as if the world became darker and more dangerous simply because she was gone, like he understood all at once that evil existed. “But I’m quite old now, you see, and old people have a hard time remembering things.” 

He smiles, hoping to make a joke of it. Declan narrows his eyes, staring straight through Jaime and looking so much like his mother for that one instant that it’s a bit alarming. He blinks, his expression clearing. 

“Were you ever married?” he asks, completely changing tone and subject. 

“I was not,” Jaime says, blinking himself. “I was a sworn member of the Kingsguard and we were not permitted to marry.” 

“Did you have any children?”

Jaime lifts an eyebrow. “I was not married.”

“You don’t have to be married to have children,” Declan tells him wisely. “That’s why some boys and girls have the surname Storm, because their father wasn’t married to their mother.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Jaime says, regretting this conversation more with every passing second. “However, Kingsguard were also not permitted to sire children.”

Declan hums. “Are you still part of the Kingsguard?”

“No. I was no longer a member upon the ascension of King Aemon,” he explains. 

“You didn’t wish to marry anyone in the east?” 

“No,” Jaime says, rising to switch out one blade for another. There are squires aplenty to clean the armory, but he finds the task soothing at the end of a long day, to while away the time until supper. There’s little enough else to do to occupy him. 

“Have you _ever_ wished to marry?”

That hits too close to a long-ignored bruise. “You’re very interested in marriage for a child,” he says instead of answering. 

Declan shrugs. “Most adults are married.”

“Most but not all.”

“Why don’t you want to get married?”

He isn’t at all stubborn like his mother. Not at all. 

“I may want to get married,” Jaime says, feeling like he may have lost control of this conversation somewhere along the way, “should I meet a woman that I would like to marry and if she agreed.”

“Do you think my mother will ever marry again?” Declan asks him. 

Jaime’s throat tightens involuntarily, the thought of it hitting him squarely in the stomach, loathe though he is to admit it. “I have no idea. You would have to ask your mother.”

“I think you should marry Mother.”

Jaime barely avoids dropping the sword onto his foot as he whips around to stare at Declan. “I’m sorry?”

“You should marry Mother,” Declan repeats firmly, as if it’s obvious and sensible. 

Quite simply, Jaime cannot form a response to that. It should be easy. A laugh, a shrug, a pat on the shoulder. Any small thing to pass off the flight of fancy of a young child. Yet, he stands there staring at a six-year-old boy as if he’s grown a second head. 

“Why would you say such a thing?” Jaime finally asks, hoping he sounds amused instead of rattled.

Declan holds his hands out in front of him and ticks off one finger, “You’re both knights that have saved each other, and everyone knows that knights who save maidens marry them.”

“Ah, but I’m not a maiden and neither is your mother,” Jaime counters.

Declan tilts his head. “But mother was a maiden when you saved her from a bear and if you’ve never married, aren’t you also a maiden?”

“Men are not maidens.”

“Women are not knights.”

Jaime sighs, takes his seat once more and gestures for Declan to continue. 

He ticks off a second finger. “You gave mother _two_ enchanted swords. That’s even more than the Maiden gave Ser Galladon of Morne.” 

“They’re only Valyrian steel.” 

“Valyrian steel has magic in it,” Declan says firmly. “That’s what Ser Manfryd said. That’s why it could destroy The Others.” 

“Are there reasons that have nothing to do with legends?”

Declan scowls at Jaime’s dismissal. “Mother likes you.”

“Your mother and I are old friends,” Jaime explains. “I like her too.”

“She lets you come with us to the beach and she spars with you every night,” Declan says as if they’re vitally important. “She only did that with Father.” 

Jaime sighs, his stomach sinking. He sets aside the sword he’s polishing and reaches for Declan, some instinct guiding him. Declan moves forward, climbing into Jaime’s lap. 

“Marriage is a bit more complicated than just liking each other and being friends,” he explains. “Your mother and I have known each other for a very long time, since before she even knew your father. That’s why we spend time together and spar in the evenings.” He hesitates, struggling with the best way to explain marriage in a place like Westeros and why love matters sometimes and not others and why it’s not an option for them. “Your mother and father loved each other very much, though. That’s what makes a good marriage.” 

“And you don’t love Mother?”

Jaime goes still, his mouth dry, tongue heavy. “There are different kinds of love. Your mother loves you as a mother loves her children. You love your brother as siblings do. Your mother and father loved each other as husband and wife.” He hesitates again, tripping over how to phrase the next sentence. “And some people love one another as friends.”

“Do you love Mother as a friend?” Declan asks, looking up at Jaime, all fawn-eyed innocence. 

Jaime’s heart thuds almost painfully against his ribs. “I do,” he says, proud of his voice for not quavering at all, even if it feels like the gravest of admissions, one he shouldn’t have bestowed upon a six-year-old before he’d even admitted it to himself. 

“I think Mother loves you, too,” Declan says with a decisive nod.

“And why is that?” Jaime asks, trying and failing not to care. 

“Because she smiles even when she rolls her eyes at you.” Declan can’t quite keep the impish smirk off his face. “She only does that with you and me and Malcolm, so it must just be people she loves.”

“And who could possibly argue with that logic?” Jaime asks sarcastically, lifting Declan off his lap. “Off you go, it’s nearing supper time and your mother won’t be smiling if you don’t wash up first.” 


	16. Chapter 16

“Ser.”

Brienne pulls up short, turning to find Jaime standing mere paces from her, cloak around his shoulders. 

“I was wondering if I might impose my presence upon you today? I would like to see more of the village surrounding Evenfall and, if you’ve time to spare, I was hoping you might show me some of the island beyond.”

“Of course,” she says, turning to walk when he draws up beside her, keeping pace with her as easily as they once fought side-by-side. 

He shares observations of the pages and squires with her; how Malcolm and Declan are improving, that neither of them rests upon being the Evenstar’s children; the boys and girls that won’t make it through to knighthood; the one girl who reminds him so much of her he fully expects her to roll her eyes and shove him on his arse half the time. 

Brienne can’t stop herself from rolling her eyes at that, but she doesn’t shove him on his arse, so she doesn’t come out too poorly. 

If the people in the village think it’s strange that Jaime Lannister, Goldenhand the Just, presumed dead for the better part of ten years, is trailing along in the wake of their Evenstar as if he belongs, no one brings too much attention to it. 

Jaime’s in fine form, charming his way through the people. It’s _strange_ to see so much of his former facade on display. He doesn’t bother around her and the boys, nor even Ser Manfryd, but for the villagers, he’s so much a reflection of his former glorious self that it’s as if seeing into the past.

By the time they’ve made their way through the entirety of Evenfall, she feels unsteady to a level that she’s actually happy to see the smile fade from his face once they’re outside the walls. Perhaps that makes her a bad person, but at least she can see _Jaime_ again.

He draws a deep breath, closing his eyes as he lets it out slowly.

“Please tell me you have a moment to walk with me,” he says, opening his eyes and pinning her in place with his gaze. 

There’s a need in his tone that she couldn’t deny even if she didn’t have the time.

“I would like to show you the cliffs,” she says. “From atop them rather than from the beach.”

He smiles again, but this is the now-familiar smile of...of her Jaime, not the man that disappeared into the fog a decade ago.

“Your home is beautiful,” Jaime says as they wander. 

“Yes,” she agrees easily. 

Tarth _is_ beautiful with its lush green grass, sharp almost-black granite cliffs, and sapphire blue waters. It’s a gentle place. She didn’t remember it as such until she came back after the wars, but it is. Everything moves a little slower on the island; everyone takes a bit more time to breathe. 

She needs the island and the island needs her. 

She thinks in a dark, deep place inside of her, that Jaime is starting to need the same. 

They finally come to rest near the edge of one of the cliffs. It’s a clear day by Tarth standards, the sky a pale blue and a hint of sunlight dancing along the surface of the sea. 

“Thank you for allowing me to come along today,” he says quietly.

She can feel his eyes on her as she says, “Of course.”

“And thank you,” he says, still staring, “for allowing me into your home and at your table.”

She turns to look at him, her throat tightening at the soft warmth in his eyes. “You’re more than welcome.”

“I don’t regret leaving,” Jaime says, turning his head to look out over the sea once more. 

“I never thought you would,” she says, confused at the sudden shift in his tone. 

“I have.” He sounds almost _wistful_. “Since I’ve been here, I keep expecting at some point for the regret to settle in, but it hasn’t. I couldn’t stay.” He looks at her once more, something so heavy in his gaze she feels it in her chest. “I couldn’t have given you this.”

“You couldn’t have--” she stops, the meaning of his words tripping her tongue before it can finish the sentence. “Jaime…”

“I would have ruined it.” He reaches up and brushes at the scar on her cheek, his thumb just catching the corner of her mouth. “I fear I would have ruined you and I can’t bear the thought of it.”

“What are you saying?”

He drops his gaze and his hand, taking a half step away, still close but not so close she feels like she’s suffocating. 

“When I left, I didn’t think I was capable of loving anyone other than Cersei,” he says. “I thought the only love inside of me was ugly, twisted, corrupt. You deserved to be loved by someone that knew how, that knew what it was to treat a woman with kindness.” 

“You think you loved me?” she asks incredulously, the words nearly catching in her mouth with how foreign they feel on her tongue. 

“I think if I didn’t love you, then I still have no idea what love is,” he says plainly. “I think I do know now. It took me nearer to fifty years than it should have, but better late than never, I suppose. It likely would have taken me too long to sort it out then and I almost certainly would have hurt you grievously before I realized.” 

She feels as if she’s been hollowed out, as if someone could hear the ocean in the empty shell of her chest. All at once, she’s nineteen-years-old standing on a ruined beach, holding a sword she doesn’t want as the man she does sails away. She’s pushed it down for so long, told herself in so many ways that it was nothing more than the intensity of wartime and young woman’s penchant for coloring intense bonds with romance. 

She has no response for him. She doesn’t even know what response there is or to what purpose he’s made such a declaration or what it means for--

“You hardly know the man I am now,” he says, reaching hesitantly and taking her hand, almost as if he’s grabbing a viper, waiting for her to strike him. She doesn’t, but she hopes he can’t tell that her hand is trembling. “And I know just as little of you.”

He closes the distance between them and looks up, catching her eyes once more, his only briefly darting down to her mouth. 

“But the more I know of you, the more I’m sure that if I had my way, I wouldn’t leave you again.”

“Jaime,” she says, somehow incapable of more speech than that.

“I’m not asking for anything more than to know if there’s hope for an old, craven soul such as myself? I’ve nothing to recommend me, save for a penchant to make messes and run from them, but I promise that I have no desire to repeat the mistakes of the past.” 

“There’s hope,” she mutters, drawing a shaking breath. 

He smiles softly, squeezes her fingers and draws away, giving her space to breathe. 

“Shall we?” he asks, offering an elbow with a much-more-comfortable smirk. 

She manages a half-hearted unimpressed look but loops her arm through his anyway. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all aboard the feelings train

It’s not as if Jaime expected Brienne to return the sentiment. Gods, it’s not as if he'd _planned_ to confess what had been brewing in his mind since his conversation with Declan. Even now, even understanding himself a little more, love seems like something beyond him, something that isn’t _for him_. Unfortunately, that leaves him not having considered the consequences of his confession.

Brienne isn’t angry, that much he knows. He’s not even sure she’s _upset_ with him, not in a way where she’s hurt by the admission. He hopes she’s not hurt. She hasn’t taken to avoiding him and on some level, he’s surprised he can sense the minute shift in their interaction.

He watches the way her throat works as she drinks from the ladle after their latest practice. She’s not even moved it away from her mouth before she cuts her eyes to the side to peer at him. She offers it to him wordlessly. 

“I’m sorry to have upset you,” he says in a rush, so quickly it’s as if someone shoved it from him. 

“Excuse me?” she says, brow furrowing.

“What I said...confessed,” he takes the ladle from her, finding his mouth suddenly dry as the sands of Dorne, “it was presumptuous and ill-timed. I meant it, but I did not mean to place any pressure upon you.”

“You didn’t,” she says, glancing away from him briefly. “As I told you, there is hope. It’s only…” She sighs, taking a step closer to him, voice softening. “What I felt for you then--I spent a very long time telling myself it was a silly flight of fancy, that you were simply another Renly, albeit slightly more infamous.” The half-smile that tilts her mouth and twinkles in her eyes is unfamiliar but welcome all the same. “What I felt for Alec was very different. I never had to be scared, not until he was sick and I knew I was going to lose my partner of so many years. I didn’t truly remember what it was to be alone. I didn’t know how to be a mother without him.

“But there wasn’t a single moment with you, not from the very beginning, that didn’t feel like I was being set on fire.” She reaches for him. His breath catches he’s so afraid to make her think better of it. She touches the elbow of his right arm, watching the slide of her hand down his arm to grasp just above where his hand would be. “I never for one moment thought there was any chance you felt anything for me beyond the respect of one knight to another and gods, I wanted you to.”

“Brienne,” he says quietly. 

She raises her eyes from where her hand is clasped around his wrist to meet his gaze. The way she looks at him has never failed to make him feel shaken, exposed down to his bones, yet somehow he’s never prepared for it, not even now. Maybe especially now, all of these years on. 

Her lips part, but she hesitates and he lists nearer to her. “It’s still difficult to believe it; that you could have wanted me then or now.”

“I would show you in a hundred different ways,” he murmurs. “A thousand, if you would allow it.”

They’re near enough now that his chest brushes hers when he breathes in, close enough that he can feel her breath on his face, warm and damp.

She kisses him, cautiously, mouth trembling. He makes a pathetic, mewling noise at the first dry brush of her lips against his but the shock of even this gentle caress courses through his entire body. Her hand is a solid weight gripping his waist and his goes to her cheek, slipping to card through the hair at the back of her head, holding her gently in the embrace.

It feels as quick as a hummingbird’s wings and as earth-shattering as a volcano. He’s neither proud nor ashamed of the way he pants when she tilts her face to break the kiss, resting her forehead against his. 

“I loved you so much it hurt,” she whispers. 

He draws in a shaking breath. He thinks he should say he’s sorry that he didn’t know, but he’s not sure that he didn’t. The signs were there, painted plainly on her face and on the lips of every person they came across. Whether he wanted to own it or not, it was hardly an outlandish notion. 

“I didn’t intend to hurt you,” he says instead, truthfully, earnestly.

“I know.”

She kisses him again, firmer this time, her lips briefly capturing his lower one before she pulls away taking a half-step back. 

“I trust that you have no intention to leave again,” she says, looking him square in the eye. “You are an honorable man, in spite of your best efforts occasionally.” He braces himself for what’s to come next. “But my children and--and even myself, we need time to build trust. You’ve been wonderful since you arrived, but there is a gulf between an old friend visiting for a time and a man…” she hesitates.

He watches as her lips vibrate, the lines around her eyes tensing, that familiar cornered expression in her eyes as if she’s still waiting for someone to jerk the rug from beneath her.

“Between an old friend and a man who intends to court and perhaps wed their mother,” he says, nearly sick with his own bravery, and potentially, his own stupid presumption. He doesn’t _hear_ her gasp, but he watches the sharp rise of her chest and the flare of her nostrils and he knows his words shocked her, but even if she denies him, he can’t regret it. “My bones already ache in the mornings,” he says with a wry smile. “There’s no sense in prevaricating when you’re as old as I am.”

“I have no idea what to say,” she says, barely above a whisper. 

“It doesn’t require an answer. I’m not offering yet, milady. As I said, it’s merely enough to know there’s hope for me yet. I simply want to be clear that I do intend to court you and who’s to say,” he says, slightly desperate to lighten the mood, “mayhap we won’t get along at all when it comes to romance. I’m very out of practice and had little enough experience to begin.”

She blinks several times before she seems to _see_ him again. His heart finally beats again when the corners of her mouth tip up in the faintest of smiles. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says lightly. “I think there are worse gestures than jumping into a bear pit unarmed or outfitting a woman in custom armor, priceless swords and a horse as beautiful as she.” 

He nearly blushes as the memory of his dismissal of her comes flooding back to him. He’d said it at the time intending to shove her off, never thinking that she would see the horse and--well, it was a lovely mare indeed. 

“Yes, well.” He clears his throat. “You will at least allow that most women wouldn’t find much romance in the majority of those actions.”

“No, but then, there are no women quite like me that I’ve met,” she says. “And there are no men quite like you either.”

He smiles, taking it for what she intends: the opening of a door through which he may walk.


End file.
